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FACT CHECK: Rick Scott’s Claim About His Education Budget

Posted October 15, 2014

CLAIM: Rick Scott says he passed an historic education budget in 2014 and has made the largest investment in public education in Florida’s history.

FACT: Florida’s best years for education funding remain the years from Charlie Crist’s first term. Rick Scott’s budget funds education $200 lower per student than Gov. Crist did seven years ago, despite having a billion-dollar surplus. One of Rick Scott’s first decisions as governor was to propose slashing education by 3.3 billion, and he signed a $1.3 billion cut into law. This summer, Scott admitted his funding isn’t historic at all, and in a campaign stunt said he wanted to match Charlie’s per-student funding number — and still came up short. In fact, Rick Scott dedicated just a fraction of the 2014 surplus to education, because Scott always puts the wealthy special interests first.